Quality Teachers Quality Learners

The families of Bios have enjoyed the fruits of their children being taught by the best educators I have worked with or observed in the classroom in my twenty-six years in education. I doubt anyone would disagree that each of those teachers have had a large positive impact on each of their students. Two out of three have entered the teaching profession through alternative ways. While all three are very intelligent, hard working, and God fearing, only one besides myself is certified. While qualifications are important for any profession including teaching, certification does not necessarily mean quality as shown in two recently published research articles appearing in Education Next and Education Finance and Policy and recently cited in the Wall Street Journal.

Essentially both studies came to the same conclusion independent of each other. With studies centered on New York City teachers, they found there were “few significant differences in effectiveness between traditionally certified teachers and teachers entering through alternative pathways” and “more important they find that differences in teacher effectiveness within pathways far exceed the average differences between pathways.”

In other words, the difference in a teacher’s effectiveness is not because of certification but because of their skills at teaching.

The study by Kane, Rockoff, and Stanger concluded that “the average of being the student of a teacher in the top quarter of effectiveness rather than the bottom quarter is roughly three times the advantage of being taught by an experienced teacher rather than by a novice, and more than ten times any advantage created by teacher certification.”

My point is not to justify our teachers not being certified or to say I do not feel qualifications for teacher at Bios are important and necessary. No, the point is having the best teachers makes a large, positive impact on your children. And our goal is to continue to attract, keep and train these best teachers so your children can continue to grow and learn.

Though these studies solely focused on student achievement, I also believe best teachers also make a profound impact on a student’s character, and in our school’s purpose, modeling Christ.

In a recent editorial, the Wall Street Journal in support of the above studies, also noted that “Teachers learn by teaching, not by mastering, the required “Education” courses associated with state certification.” My strong preference is to hire teachers with degrees that give them specific skills and even experiences in their lives using those learned skills. They are then able to share with our students from those experiences and those experiences help to provide them training in how to teach.

The Core Group (which is made up of teachers and staff committed to the Bios way of instructing and serving our families) and I constantly discuss how to maintain what we have as we grow and who to hire to continue our practice of having the best teachers for our students.

28 to graduate

It takes twenty-eight credits to graduate from Bios Christian Academy. Four of those credits required for graduation are Bible classes. So to then compare us to the outside world, our students need twenty-four other credits to graduate. Of those 24 credits, four are for math, English – 4, Science – 3, History – 3, Spanish – 3, and 7 electives. Each credit is two semesters of a course.

The reason I bring this up now is because of the current controversy in the Gilbert and Queen Creek School Districts over increasing the credits required for graduation from twenty-two to twenty-three.

The East Valley Tribune in an editorial on Sunday, December 14 supported the idea, saying, “[Public schools’] focus must be on the educational needs to prepare students for college or, more generally, success as informed, well-rounded adults.” That is exactly the focus the public schools need, but unfortunately they do not have.

After witnessing and educating on Christ, our focus is college-prep. Early graduation from high school does not help prepare for college. Consistently students are emotionally and educationally “ready” for college at just about the middle of their third quarter of the senior year. But before that, every semester of every class is used to prepare them for college and the world they live in. Twenty-four credits are just enough to provide them for that.